Western Heartsease
Vìola ocellàta
White and yellow
Spring, summer
Cal., Oreg.
A shy little woodland plant, from five to twelve inches tall, with creeping rootstocks and small, dry stipules. The flowers are an inch or less across, the two upper petals white, tinged with reddish-purple on the outside, and the other petals white or yellow, with a splash of purple on each of the two side petals and the lower one veined with purple. This grows in shady woods.
Western Heartsease—Viola ocellata.
Pine Violet—V. lobata.
Yellow Mountain Violet
Vìola venòsa
Yellow
Spring
Northwest and Utah
An attractive kind, usually about three inches tall, with almost smooth leaves, often with purplish veins, with blunt tips and margins obscurely or coarsely toothed, or almost toothless, and with long leafstalks. The flowers are usually less than half an inch long, with clear yellow petals, more or less tinged with purple on the outside, the lower petal usually with several, purplish-black veins, the two side petals with one or two veins. This has no scent, the capsule is roundish and hairy, and the cleistogamous flowers are abundant. It grows on dry mountainsides and is very variable both as to flower and foliage and much smaller at great altitudes, the whole plant being not more than an inch high. The drawing is of a Utah plant.
Canada Violet
Vìola Canadénsis
Pale-violet, white
Spring, summer
West, etc., except Cal.
This is quite tall, the slender, rather weak stems being sometimes over a foot high, with smooth leaves, often with some hairs on the veins of the under side. The flowers, over half an inch across, with a short petal-spur, are almost white, delicately veined with purple, yellow in the throat and tinged with violet or purple on the outside. Occasionally they are pure-white all over and sometimes sweet-scented. The capsule is oval and smooth. This is common in eastern mountain woods, and to eastern eyes looked far from home when we found it in Walnut Canyon in Arizona.
Pale Mountain Violet
Vìola adúnca var. glàbra
Pale-blue
Spring, summer
Utah
This is small and low, about three inches high, with leafy stems, forming a clump of small, smooth, more or less toothed leaves, with blunt tips, dark green on the upper side and paler on the under, with two, quite large, fringed bracts at the bases of the leaf-stalks, and two, small, fringed bracts on the flower-stems, half an inch below the flower. The flowers are scentless, measure less than half an inch across, and are pale-blue or almost white, with veins of dark blue on the lower petal and tufts of white, fuzzy hairs inside, at the base of the side petals, the spur purplish. This grows in mountain canyons, at a height of five thousand to nine thousand feet, and is very small at great altitudes.